2953 BERNARD DARWIN: Pity the Poor Player JACQUETTA HAWKES : Time-keeping JOHN ARLOTT : On Dylan Thomas MICHAEL GEDGE : Priests, Politics and the Pope

in Italy -against Britain seems to be subsiding, although it will be long before Anglo- Italian relations recover from the blows dealt in Trieste last week. Signor Pella's...

N o. 6 5 4 2 FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13, 1953 PRICE 7d.

Obviously it is not for British observers to judge a case Which the relevant American authorities have not yet heard in full. But nobody here has been led into doubt of Mr....

Dr. Moussadek's conduct at his trial lacks dignity but not spirit. Confinement, as he complains, may have chilled his bones : it has not frozen his old capacity to turn any...

The first impact of the iiew Conservative approach to the problem of rents appears to have stunned the critics on both sides of the House. The only question which anyone has...

It is the plainest common sense that British agriculture„and any British Government which accepts the obligations laid down in the Agriculture Act of 1947, must, at this time of...

With the death of King Ibn Saud, Saudi Arabia faces a testing period in its history. In its present form, the kingdom is largely the personal creation of the dead King. When Ibn...

The decision of Sir Roy Welensky and the other European elected members of the Northern Rhodesian Legislative Coun- cil to withdraw from co-operation with the official members...

The setting up of the Atomic Energy Corporation, outlined in the Government's White Paper, marks a change of emphasis in atomic policy, from research and military needs to the...

T HE programme for the session that was announced in the Queen's Speech last week was finally approved by majorities of 36 on Monday and of 23 on Tuesday. The first vote was on...

Next week's issue of the " Spectator " will be the special Christmas Number, of 72 pages. It will contain the first of a new series of Weekly articles by Compton Mackenzie....

I N the House of Commons on Thursday, November 5th, Mr. Hector McNeil said that his party "pleads once more , that a meeting should be sought" between the Heads of State of...

I OFTEN wonder what politicians have in mind when they refer, as many of them did in this week's debate on agriculture, to "the farming community." Twenty years ago it would...

In the past he wag something of a recluse, and saw—unless he happened to hunt—little of what was going on on the land around his holding. Today it is easy, and, especially among...

They got married, settled into a small house in the Shires and ordered, among other necessities of life, The Times. It had taken them just over three months to discover that...

I doubt whether a letter from a practising homosexual (" name and address supplied ") which was published last week by one of our contemporaries will gain much sympathy for his...

It seems to me typical of Dr. Moussadek that the newspapers in this country and America doggedly insist on spelling his name in at least four different ways. "He always makes...

I do not know to what extent local patriotism would respond to the incentive, but I should have thought it would be worth the Forestry Commission's while to put their cam- paign...

By ROBERT TOWNELEY T HE most significant conclusion to be drawn from the unexpected defeat last week of Republican candidates in gubernatorial and mayoral elections in the...

COMPTON MACKENZIE IN THE SPECTATOR

At least, in offering you the opportunity of sending the Spectator to your friends as your Christmas or New Year Gift, for much less than the normal subscription rate, we hope...

By D. R. GILLIE M MENDES-FRANCE, who has so far filled a most useful part as the Cassandra of the Fourth Republic, ,crying unpopular truths from the house tops, has reminded his...

By SIR CARLETON ALLEN, Q.C. WAVE mounts, topples over and flattens out; and if that is what the "crime wave" is supposed to do, the metaphor is misleading, so far at least as...

EUGENE GOOSSENS'S periodical visits to this country are always the occasion for concerts at which the programmes carry just that suspicion of something different which is now so...

CINEMA Time in the Sun. (Continentale.)—From Here to Eternity. (Leicester Square.)— Les Vacances de M. Hulot. (Curzon.) THE great Russian director Eisenstein, whose picture The...

Antony and Cleopatra. By William Shake- speare. (Princes.)—The Sleeping Prince. By Terence Rattigan. (Phoenix.) No play of Shakespeare's contains more beautiful poetry than...

As we had planned, we fired the great heap of brush in the kitchen garden on the evening of the Fifth. Our blaze lit the shadows beneath the pine trees on the hill, and the...

AFTER the Football Association's gesture come two more invited exhibitions: one of coronation paintings sponsored by the Minister of Works, to be seen in the Pillared Hall of...

wood, looking out at the clump of hawthorns growing on the hillside, I began to take an interest in a group of magpies that were fluttering round the trees and apparently...

The fall of the leaf is a sad thing whether it comes at the end of October or in the darker days of November. One year it seems as though the trees might hold their leaves in...

and bushes, a good time to prune goose- berries and red-currants as well as the season for setting cuttings of both these berry bushes. Use shoots of current season's growth for...

SIR, — Your circular letter has brought back many memories of the so-called " Pollock's Pets," who were at one time so closely con- nected with your paper. I was, in fact, a...

MALAYA AND THE ENGLISH PRESS SIR, — In spite of its immense economic impor- tance as a dollar-earner for the whole Com- monwealth and its vital strategic position in South-East...

S1R, — The 252 Hospitals listed in the current list of out-patient clinics available in Greater London alone run between them 2,257 clinics for every form of sickness except...

SIR, — There is an aspect of homosexuality not so far •touched on in your correspondence. The man suffering from disease accepts treat- ment, and wishes to get well. The homo-...

big-game hunter in Bulawayo is reported as offering half-a-dozen baby crocodiles to anyone who will give them a "good home." Competitors are invited to wile a letter (limit 150...

Cooke did not libel them in her entry for Spectator Competition No. 192. She justly referred to those on the Mappin Terrace as " wild," not " evil." If my handwriting is to...

Competitors were asked to in vein an extract front a review of one of the following books, embodying as large a number as possible of false prophecies and unlucky comparisons:...

At the beginning of October two familiar features of the Spectator and one new one were brought together and placed in the paper after Letters to the Editor. The familiar...

Time-keeping By JACQUETTA HAWKES T HE Black Forest Railway climbs all the way from Offenburg to Triberg. Spinning the dust of the plain from its wheels, the train mounts...

Pity the Poor Player By BERNARD DARWIN 66 'D never have missed that catch," vociferated our old village slow bowler, "no, that I wouldn't." There was a Test match in progress...

Tomorrow Is Tonight By RICHARD NEWNHAM (New College, Oxford) 46 AVE you come from the Students' Union ? " asked the pleasant clerk from behind an almost empty desk. I hadn't,...

Random Pleasure By RICHARD MURPHY HE first problem with poetry is how it should be read. Movement or trends, the poet and his reputation, have to be expelled from the mind...

Boldness Be My Friend. By Richard Pape. (Elek. 16s.) WE are now more critical, perhaps ungratefully, of unadorned War adventure. Now that the bones of the War are increasingly...

Canada : The Golden Hinge. By Leslie Roberts. (Harrap. 15s.) THE majority of Canadians, natives of a land blessed with ample timber resources, come equipped almost from birth...

The Actor's Ways and Means. By Michael Redgrave. (Heinemann. 10s. 6d.) "LEARN yer words, dear, and you'll feel it all right." Per14ps the old pro's advice is ultimately the most...

WHEN the Russian fever was at its height in the 1920s and 1930s almost any translation from the Russian was liable to be seized upon as a revelation of a startlingly new and...

It's an Old Irish Custom. By Olivia Robertson. (Dennis Dobson ? . 9s. 6d.) IT is perhaps a pity that the author of this book is an Irishwoman. She may be accused of partiality...

A Single Pilgrim. By Norman Lewis. (Cape. 12s. 6d.) 8s. 6d.) THERE is something truly poetical about Mr. Prokosch's story, the feeling one has in dreams of a reality larger...

MR. RACKHAM'S book is excellent. In a succinct introduction the author gives the history, techniques and development between 1740 and 1840 of Staffordshire animal figures, made...

18s.) THE progress and setbacks of Australian drama from the late eighteenth century to the present day have been thoughtfully surveyed in this book. The early chapters are...

& Unwin. 12s. 6d.) A YOUNG man was so anxious to paddle his own canoe he made one for himself and became a greenhorn trapper. His strength of purpose carried him from...

(Eyre & Spottiswoode. 21s.) AT the end of his life Napoleon said : " I have fought sixty battles and I have learned nothing which I did not know at the beginning." His first...

PROFESSOR LiTTLEwooD is a very eminent mathematician, and has had, for forty-five years, the privilege of dining at the High Table of Trinity, where one's neighbour is quite...

H. White. Vol. XII, Part I. (St. Catherine's Press, Ltd. £3 13s. 6d.) THIS new volume of the, Complete Peerage runs from the Barony of Skelmersdale to the Marquessate of...

Obermaier's, one of the great scholars of pre-historic art. It describes what is known and what is still being debated about the earliest carvings, decora- tions and cave...

16s.) A SENSITIVE study, written with a charming modesty, and free of jargon. The sub-title is "A Study in Structure," but it is a study in pattern rather than of structure in,...

By CUSTOS INTEREST shifted in the industrial markets this week to motor shares on the publication of a number of reports. JOSEPH LUCAS, which serves both motor and aircraft...

By NICHOLAS DAVENPORT THE only market on the Stock Exchange which is not enjoying a booming time is the pne in South African gold shares. It has sunk to the depression levels of...

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